A Spirited Picnic
by Vathara
Summary: A bit more than a month after In the Cat's Ear. Big brothers protect, yes - but little sisters have their own ways of looking after family. Part 4 of Shattered Sky.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: A bit more than a month after _In the Cat's Ear_. Big brothers protect, yes - but little sisters have their own ways of looking after family.

* * *

Karin looked at the panoply of picnic items spread over the kitchen table with a sense of accomplishment. Ichigo should be home soon. Goat-Face was packed off to go complain to Dr. Ishida about kids wanting to _avoid_ the ghosts for O-Bon. And Yuzu was in her element as supreme commander of the kitchen and chief planner of How to Meet Ichigo's New Friends Without Scaring Them Out Of Their Lives.

Yuzu had actually written it down that way. Karin would snicker, but, well...

"Bento!" Yuzu declared, pencil poised over her list.

"Check," Karin nodded.

"Cloth! Plates! Chopsticks!"

"Check, check, and check," Karin declared, physically touching each object. With some of the prank-items Sandal-Hat had lying around, you could never be too sure.

"Soccer ball!"

Karin blinked. "...Soccer ball?"

"We're going to have two boys there, you should bring it," Yuzu said decisively. "Let 'em roughhouse!"

Karin gave her sister a wry look. "Li's not a teenager."

"But he's not that old, either." Yuzu looked up from her list, serious. "You've seen him. He's good at hiding it. Like Onii-chan, on the anniversary. But sometimes Li just looks so _sad_."

"And Kirsi's shy," Karin muttered. "The bad kind."

"She keeps Li and Uncle Kuno between her and other people," Yuzu agreed. "And she looks at pictures, but they always read things to her if someone writes it down. I don't think she can see very well."

"Not physical stuff, anyway," Karin agreed, heading upstairs to round up a soccer ball.

Yuzu brightened. "You're sure?"

"Pretty sure," Karin called down, going through her gear for a ball that split the difference between worn out and school tournament shiny. _There we go_. "One of the local ghosts wandered into the market last time I got some milk. Mr. Kuno didn't twitch, but Kirsi looked that way." She scooped up the ball. "And Li... well. He kind of reminded me of me."

" _De_ -nial," Yuzu giggled as her twin thumped back downstairs.

"Worked most of the time," Karin grumbled. "I think he just doesn't want people freaking out when he stares at thin air. You know, like Ichigo used to before he just gave up on normal?"

She gripped the ball tighter, seeing that echoing flash of worry in Yuzu's eyes. Normal could go hang. Ichigo'd been slammed into normal for months, knowing everyone around him was still in danger from Hollows, if not from Aizen. It'd almost strangled him.

 _I don't want to see Ichigo hurt, ever again. What Sandal-Hat's told us about Aizen, and the Arrancar... our brother could have died. Uryuu, Tatsuki, Orihime, Chad - they all could have died._ Worse _than died_.

But if it came down to hurt, or Ichigo never seeing spirits again...

 _The Hollows won't go away, ever. They'll always be after me, and Yuzu, and all Ichigo's friends. And he couldn't even_ see _them_.

Karin never wanted to see her brother that hopeless again. Ever.

"Well." Yuzu twirled a measuring cup on her finger like a gunslinger's revolver, before shoving it back in the drawer with a deliberately dramatic _clink_. "We just need to let them know normal is _different_ in Karakura."

* * *

 _Riverbank looks clear_. Hei lowered the binoculars, careful not to move them through an angle that would catch a flash of sun. He'd confirmed the meeting place with Ichigo days ago, scouted it at various times and weather conditions, identified at least three potential escape routes including the river, pre-positioned and disguised rubber floats for the rest of the team in case they did need to take that route and he had to keep them at least partly insulated from any power release-

"You know this is just grabbing some food with friends." In cover behind a tree with him and the other two, Huang straightened his string tie, and gave Hei a wry look. "If Doc Ishida's right, you _do_ get the whole friends idea."

"I'm out of practice." Hei looked aside. "Although I could be Li for the girls, Yuzu's used to the cover in the store anyway..."

"Maybe less than you think." Petting the black fur on her shoulder, Yin raised her head. "They're Ichigo's sisters. They'll know how to look beyond the surface, into the heart."

"And we're back to the manga tropes," Mao sighed. "Little one, you do know that in our world, defeat does not mean friendship? It means _death_. Quick if you're lucky. Slow, if you're really not."

Yin blinked at the serious cat. "Hei defeated Section Four."

"I knocked them out," Hei corrected her. "And ran. No one _wins_ a fight, Yin. You survive it, or escape."

"...I know." Yin's lips twitched a little. "But I liked the faces Misaki made when she got your note."

 _What?_

"You looked all the way into Tokyo?" Huang jumped on that before he could. "You can reach that far? Girl, you gotta be more careful. You could have gotten hurt!"

"The Astronomics Dolls helped me," Yin stated. "The ones who are... trying to wake up. I told them you'd tell Misaki about helping Dolls, and they know Misaki talks to Kanami, and she was there. They wanted to know what would help, so when Kanami tries they can try to reach back. So I told them."

Mao hissed softly, as close as the cat could get to a whistle. "Well. I can't blame anyone for cultivating useful connections. And given _I_ like being alive and walking around as I please, it'd be hypocritical of me not to say those Dolls should get the chance. But Huang's right, Yin. _Please_ be careful. If the Dolls are healing, they're more like people - and you know how nasty humans can be. Even when they're not trying. Not every Doll will be safe."

"...Oh." Yin blinked, and looked at Hei, violet eyes one drowning question.

"He's right," Hei agreed. "So far most of the Dolls we've dealt with needed our help. If they're learning to want things again... then they might be remembering again. Like you did. Before, the Syndicate didn't threaten Dolls' families because there wasn't any _point_. But if Dolls wake up, if they have people they care about again..."

"Oh." Yin started. "It's good that you're you, then." She tilted her head. "Do you think the Syndicate thinks you care about Chief Kirihara? You didn't kill her."

Where on earth had that come from? "I didn't kill any of Section Four," Hei said firmly.

Yin nodded. "But she's the only one who's pretty."

Mao was cackling, leaning against Yin's wig and bunching claws to stay on her shoulder. Huang gave Hei a long-suffering look, followed by a slowly raised eyebrow that somehow made Hei's ears burn.

"She's a cop," Hei protested. "I'm - retired. Just trying to get by, and stay alive. _Not crazy_."

"Sure you're not," Huang said dryly. "But even if she wants to strangle you more than kiss you, I'm kind of surprised she hasn't shown up in that noodle shop."

Hei blinked. Gave their handler a sideways glance.

"You're not surprised." Huang folded his arms. "Okay, give."

"I manipulated her," Hei said practically. "The first time she ever saw Li, she was questioning me as the _neighbor who just moved in_ next to Shinoda Chiaki. She bought my story then; she believed my cover for months, no matter how many times I showed up where Contractors did. I dropped persona in a restaurant just before Hell's Gate, and all she did was laugh. She's the chief of Section Four, and she didn't believe I was BK-201 - she _couldn't_ believe it - until I took Hourai down."

It hurt. He'd been doing what he had to; he'd actually been keeping her safe, the Syndicate would never have let Chief Kirihara live if she remembered who the Black Reaper was. But it hurt.

"Detective, and you stabbed her straight in the ego." Huang grunted, nodding once. "Yeah. That, I get."

"More than that." Hei took a breath. "If everything I told her as Li was a lie, then... she's going to assume anything else I tell her might be. She'll go over every character I wrote, trying to figure out how it could be a trap. And if she just thinks I'll lie to her - then why show up at all? If I'm telling the truth she can find me in Karakura anytime she wants. If I'm not, Astronomics will pick me up somewhere else. So unless something changes, she won't show. It wouldn't be rational."

"She is human," Mao observed, with a quick nudge against Yin's ear. "But a mostly rational one. It'd fit." He stretched, and settled again on his jacket shoulder perch. "So! I hear these twins are actually _reasonable_ twelve-year-olds, who don't squash anything with fur in reach. Do you think they brought fish?"

"If they didn't, I did." Hei hefted his hamper as orange hair came into view. "There should be more than enough."

"Says the walking appetite," Mao muttered wryly, before deliberately closing his fangs.

 _I wish Mao had more people to talk to_ , Hei thought, walking out of concealment as Ichigo and his sisters started to look around the meeting point. _Most of the time he seems fine with just us, but if Contractors need emotional connections to heal, then just having more people he doesn't have to hide from might help-_

 _Oh_.

When she'd shown up in the market, Karin had had her hair down and loose. Today - today she'd pulled it back into a tight dark tail of hair, and that slim, athletic stance...

 _Don't freeze. Don't react. It's not her. You_ know _it's not her_.

Thank the gods for Kurosaki Karin's black eyes. If she'd had blue, like Bai... he'd be lost.

* * *

 _What was that look?_ Karin wondered, as Ichigo's newest set of sketchy friends slunk out of hiding, with a casual saunter that made it _look_ like they were just out for your average O-Bon riverbank picnic walk and meet-up with relatives, honest.

Though she had a bad feeling she knew exactly what Li's look was. It was the kind of cold shock Ichigo got sometimes, when someone reminded him of Rukia. Only sadder.

 _We'd better get this right_. Karin traded a speaking glance with her twin. _They_ really _need help_.

Ichigo let out a relieved breath he probably thought was subtle, and headed for the trio plus cat. "Guys, these are my sisters. Yuzu, Karin-"

Yuzu held up a hand. Waited a second for him to sputter to a stop.

 _Here we go_.

Both twins bowed. "Thank you for looking after our idiot big brother," Yuzu said formally.

"He can be thick, sometimes," Karin added, "but he's the best guy we know, and we appreciate having him in one piece."

Ichigo choked.

"Um." Li swallowed, visibly nervous. "There's... no need to be that formal? We're just having a picnic..."

"Yes there is!" Yuzu straightened up, fierce. "Onii-chan's not telling us everything about Hideyo. We _know_ that. But we know our brother. So we've got a pretty good idea."

"Someone was on the job." Karin snorted. "Yeah, right. If the people who are supposed to deal with those problems had been there, it wouldn't have been a problem in the first place." She looked them all over, including the cat. Since when did cats have purple eyes? "Besides. We can count. Ichigo started getting better right after he started hanging out with you guys."

And that was an _urk_ from her brother. "Wait, how did you know I was-?"

Yuzu gave him a smile, touched with just a little mischief. "You twitched."

Ichigo's ears were red. "I did not!"

"When you saw me talking to Li-san? You _did_ ," Yuzu nodded firmly. "Almost as bad as the first time I gave you an extra onigiri for Rukia-chan's lunch!"

"Wait, you - what?"

" _Really_ , Onii-chan," Yuzu _hmph_ ed. "If you were going to invite your girlfriend to live in your room, the least we could do was feed her!"

"She's not my girlfriend!"

Karin couldn't help it; she wrapped her arms around her middle and cackled. Oh, the look on his _face_.

 _This is good. This is our big brother. And he said_ isn't, _not_ wasn't. _He thinks he'll see Rukia again_.

"Though I wish she'd asked before she borrowed my pajamas," Yuzu sighed. "But shinigami aren't supposed to tell people who don't see ghosts about Hollows and everything, so I guess she thought she was doing her job."

Ichigo facepalmed. "Yuzu."

"Li helped you kill a Hollow!" Yuzu gave him a serious glare. "If you haven't told him about shinigami, you'd better. Before he gets in more trouble than they already are!"

Uncle Kuno lifted gray brows at that. "An' what makes you think we're in trouble, little lady?"

"You found our brother," Karin said bluntly, unwrapping her arms. Oh, she was going to have sore sides tomorrow. But it was worth it. "Ichigo _always_ finds people who are in trouble. Who need help. So." She took a breath. "You don't have to tell us anything. We know you're in trouble; we know you're helping our big brother, and he's helping you. That's enough. But if you want to talk... we know a lot about supernatural stuff, and we'd like to know more. So _we_ can stay out of trouble, and help all our friends stay alive."

Oho. Li twitched at that last bit. Why was she not surprised?

Kirsi nodded once; almost the first time her face had moved since they came in view. "Hollows don't care that you're children. Do they."

"Kiddo," Uncle Kuno said under his breath.

"Oh no, they _like_ kids," Karin said darkly, tempted to grab her soccer ball and start warm-up kicks just to show anything watching who was boss. "Enough power to eat, and not enough know-how to fight 'em. They just _love_ kids."

Li was watching her and Yuzu both. Blinked once, some of that harmless look sliding away like rain as he glanced at Ichigo. "You're their brother. Is it safe for them?"

"What the he- heck is safe, anymore," Ichigo grumbled. "If they never let on that they were feeding a shinigami hiding out in my closet, they really can keep a secret." He chewed his lip. "And I know my sisters. If they ran into someone having... your kinds of problems... they'd try to _help_. If they don't know what to do, they could get killed."

"Good argument," said the cat.

The _cat_.

"Besides, they're cute. And fierce. _And_ rational," the black cat went on. "Rare combination. We ought to up their survival chances just for the hell of it." He coughed; almost a cat-chuckle. "I'm Mao. And no, I'm not related to this Captain Yoruichi I keep hearing about. I'm firmly on this side of the living line. Well, mostly. Dr. Ishida is sure we're all still alive." Black ears perked; Karin caught a faint gleam of darkened metal on one. "So your brother had a shinigami hiding out in his closet? I have _got_ to hear this one."

* * *

It felt good to talk about the closet-stealing shrimp, Ichigo realized, as they talked and ate. Painful, but good. Like getting a cast off, and taking the first few achy steps without that weight. He skimmed over some of the details, and a lot of the scary, but... Karin and Yuzu knew about Hollows. They deserved the straight story of how his idiotically large reiatsu had drawn in the fish-faced monster and how his and Rukia's mutual fumbles had ended up with her near-powerless and him facing down a monster with a zanpakutou he'd barely known how to use. _Sharp edge goes at the other guy_ , at least he'd gotten that right.

From there he went over some of the other ghosts they'd saved and Hollows they'd purified, including that insane earthbound ghost at the old hospital that Don Kanoji had tried to exorcize. With less than benevolent results. "That's how I knew it was a jibakurei when we got inside Boss Yanase's house," Ichigo said soberly. "That _feel_ to the place. Ugh." He shuddered. "Rukia says they're really hard for shinigami to find. Most ghosts manifest all the time, or on a schedule; a patrol can turn 'em up pretty easily. Earthbound ghosts only show up when someone messes with what they're chained to. When I was a substitute, I tried to patrol a different part of Karakura every night to stir them up. Otherwise... well, you were there, you saw what happened."

"Parts of it," Hei said soberly. Glanced at the rest of his team. "The ghost... blew up. And then there was screaming, and... I don't know, mist, coming together into something I could barely see. And it came after us."

Yuzu swallowed. "But you stopped it."

"Your brother knew its tactics," Hei told her. "If he hadn't been there - I probably would have made it out alive. But I'd have been hurt. And I don't think I'd have been able to save Hideyo, too."

Yuzu leaned against Ichigo, breath hitching a little. He patted her shoulder, then rested a hand on her hair. "It's okay. We made it out. We're all okay."

"How did you make it out?" Karin raised a black brow. "If you don't mind us asking. If you and my brother keep hanging out you probably will hit another Hollow sometime. I'd kind of like to know you've got more than just luck."

"Bright kid." Huang tipped his beret back a little, regarding her fondly. "Never go into a fight counting on luck."

"Unless you can make sure it's your enemy's, and all bad." Mao licked a bit of tuna off his whiskers, and settled down between Yin and the plate of fish and various cat-safe greens they'd put down for him. He slanted a violet glance at Hei. "If they are going to know about Contractors... my power's just a little more difficult to demonstrate."

Hei fished some spare coins out of his pocket, slipping them between his fingers. Held up his fist so the twins had a clear view of metal edges. And just... breathed.

The blue aura didn't show up in daylight, Ichigo realized. If he hadn't been watching Hei's eyes, he might not have seen the red glow at all.

The sparks arcing between bright aluminum, though - those were unmistakable.

Yuzu's jaw dropped. Karin whistled. "Nice."

Hei stared at her, glow dying.

"What?" Karin cocked her head, surprised. "Hollows are tough bastards. You can zap them? That looks _really handy_."

"That's... not the first thing people usually say," Hei managed. "It's dangerous. I mean, yes, I found ways to make it useful, sometimes even... fun... but-" He stopped. Looked away. "I can kill people. Just by touching them."

Which was proof right there the twins had softened him up already, Ichigo thought, because nobody who needed family that much would try to keep them at arm's length unless he already cared.

 _Well, enough of that_. Ichigo folded his arms, and scowled. "Accidentally?"

Hei gave him a wary look. "No. I have to focus."

Which gave Ichigo a shiver of, some Contractors probably _didn't_. Oh joy.

"Then there's no problem." Karin gave Hei her best taking-down-opposing-team smirk. "Bet you've pulled off some _awesome_ pranks." She leaned toward him over the picnic cloth, fingers wriggling like bait.

 _Oh no_.

"So did you make Ichigo's hair go poof," Karin pounced, "and if you did - do you have pictures?"

 _I am so dead._

"Um." Hei looked like Karin was the most dangerous thing he'd seen all day. "Yes. And no?"

Yuzu heaved a sigh. "Aww..."

Traitors. His sisters were awful, blackmailing traitors. Both of them. "I've got a bigger allowance than you anyway," Ichigo _hmph_ ed. "I'd bribe him not to show you. Even if they existed."

Yuzu peeked up at him, smile as innocent and bright as sunlight. "I cook."

Hei blinked. Looked down at the picnic spread they'd put a dent in; he'd brought as big a bento as Yuzu's, which had made Ichigo wonder until he saw everyone eat. Hei was the worst, but Ichigo had found himself _starving_ , and Yin and Karin had pretty much matched munch for munch.

 _Shinigami need to eat, when other spirits don't. Hollows, Arrancar... does everyone with spirit-powers get hungry?_

Didn't hurt that Hei was a damn good cook. Maybe as good as Yuzu. And even a great cook sometimes wanted someone else to cook for them. Just for a change.

Yep. That was definitely a conflicted look on Hei's face.

Huang chuckled. "You get bribed, you stay bribed. Matter of honor."

"But she's really good," Hei said mournfully.

 _Thank god those pictures don't exist_. Ichigo paused, as a truly frightening thought occurred. _Yet_.

"Hmm." Mao nudged up against Yin. "Which side has more salmon?"

Yin stroked black fur. "Mercenary."

"Hello? _Cat_." Mao arched under her hands. "Not to mention, Contractor."

The twins eyed the pair, then Ichigo. "So what are Contractors?" Karin asked. "Besides the latest spirit weirdness to hit Karakura."

"Spirit weirdness people in the Yakuza and governments know about," Ichigo said grimly.

"Oh no," Yuzu said faintly.

Yeah. His little sisters were _smart_. Because if anyone with bad intentions had a clue about one kind of spirit-sight, how long would it be before they figured out there were others out there?

"Breathe," Huang said gruffly. "Your brother managed to get Astronomics to look anywhere but here. You oughta be safe. 'Least for right now."

"And even in the government and Yakuza, most people have no idea what to look for." Hei leaned his chin on his fists, giving Yuzu a tentative smile. "I was working as a waiter in a Yakuza restaurant, a few months back, and someone from an opposing family tried to leave without paying..."

* * *

"Yakuza and Hollows and cops from Tokyo, and he still won't talk to me!"

Ryuuken leaned against the outside wall of his hospital well away from the Emergency entrance, blowing out a thin stream of smoke. Damned if he would handle this level of Kurosaki drama without nicotine. "And you're surprised? You made very sure he wouldn't. Trust is a two-way relationship. It can't exist without reciprocation." As he knew well with Uryuu. The trust between them was strained, at best. On both sides.

Although it had improved over the past month. At least to civility. Apparently knowing _someone_ was looking after Ichigo's spirit-wounds had thawed his son's usual icy indifference. They'd even managed to have a short conversation about progress in school and which universities might be most amenable to Uryuu's interests. It'd felt like walking on eggshells, but... they'd talked.

Isshin flung himself away from the wall again, gesticulating as he paced. "Since when did I ever not trust my son?"

Ryuuken stared at the man. Very deliberately, tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette. "Isshin. If your son has recounted events accurately, you never told him you were a shinigami until you showed up in the very last battle against Aizen-"

"You _know_ Soul Society laws-"

"-And even then _you never told him_ ," Ryuuken cut the ex-captain off. "Soul Society laws? My family has lived under their suspended sentence of execution for _centuries_. I told Uryuu the day he was able to ask me what ghosts and Hollows were. Some things need to be said."

Isshin snorted. "Oh yeah. You said it so well the kid went straight to his grandpa for training and never looked back."

That stung. "I never said I handled it well," Ryuuken said dryly. "But I told him. Because I am not his friend. _I am his father_. It is my duty, as his father, to give him the best moral code I can, and make sure he is alive to use it."

"Sounds more like Souken handled that."

An even lower blow. Ryuuken counted to five. "Oh yes. My father trained him _so_ well, Uryuu burned out his own abilities to try - _try_ \- to take down a shinigami captain. Leaving him helpless once he returned to Earth, and _still visible to Hollows_."

Isshin started to say something... then apparently thought better of it.

"So I intervened. I'm sure you've heard the terms."

"Yeah, I did," Isshin agreed. "Not right, you keeping him away from his friends."

"What does right have to do with it?" Ryuuken eyed the man darkly. "You shinigami created this mess. Why should my son have been involved? Ever? Yes, I was willing to extract an oath I guessed he'd never hold to, in the hopes of keeping him out of it. But when he needed help, _I helped_."

Isshin side-eyed him right back. "And you think I didn't?"

Ryuuken arched a brow. "I think, if Urahara had truly decided Aizen needed to die, you and the others could have lured him here so I could _shoot_ him."

"You kidding? Aizen Sousuke, Captain of the Fifth, with Old Man Yama's ear?" Isshin waved away the thought. "He was way too smug to fall for bait. Until he decided it was a great idea to kill everybody in Karakura!"

Fair argument. Except. "Urahara's Hougyoku," Ryuuken reminded him.

"We were trying to make sure he _didn't_ get his hands on that," Isshin said dryly. "Plus, sentence of execution. If you took him down Soul Society would have _destroyed_ you."

"If it saved my son's life," Ryuuken said, very quietly, "don't you think that was a price I would have been willing to pay?"

 _That was the past. Focus on the future_.

"But Aizen is gone, hopefully for good, and we need to concentrate on cleaning up the mess," Ryuuken went on. "I wish my grandfather was alive. As it is I'm having to rely on what notes he left to treat Ichigo, and other wounded souls."

That won him a sharp look from Isshin. "What other wounded souls?"

Sometimes the man's tunnel vision made Ryuuken want to tear his own hair out. It made him a good general practitioner with the patients who came to him, but it'd be hell if Isshin had to do complex diagnoses in a larger hospital. "Soul Society pulled an _entire town_ into the spirit realm, and then proceeded to unleash captain-level spiritual powers all through it. Several dozen people _died_. Hundreds more were injured. Ichigo's injuries are among the most severe of those still living, but he is far from the only one whose soul was burned."

How many citizens of Karakura might be injured, Ryuuken hadn't realized until he'd walked into the police department and asked after the ghost murders. Officer Nakano might have the strongest spirit-sight in that motley group, but at least a third of the detectives he'd encountered were sensitive enough to tell a ghost from a cold draft, and all of the four who kept the ghost murders files could see blurs.

 _They need help. The last thing we need is Hollows targeting our police officers_.

At least the detectives were willing to take help. Even as their jaws had dropped at what he'd told them.

 _Yes, the monsters are real. Kurosaki Ichigo - and I, and some others - can see them. Try not to press Ichigo for too many details; he's skirting the edges of an execution order just by admitting Hollows_ exist.

 _As am I. My family has been under a suspended sentence of execution for centuries, for what we know. Which has not stopped my son from trying to do what he thinks is right... and if you know this much about Hollows already, eventually you_ will _catch Uryuu on the scene_.

Apparently the police already had; or close enough to certain scenes to be suspicious. Along with Ichigo, and Chad. Orihime and Tatsuki seemed to have escaped notice, for now.

Officer Nakano had been _very_ glad to have Ryuuken's number for emergencies. And even more relieved to hear that quiet Li Tian was keeping a low profile, just as anyone else with spirit-sight would, but was a good and decent citizen who'd be more than willing to help out if officers were in danger.

 _A lie of omission_. Ryuuken tried not to sigh. _I hope it works_.

Because once the cops knew _he_ knew about the spirit-fires on the power lines, they'd been the ones to caution Dr. Ishida to be careful. The last thing an honest citizen of Karakura needed was for Section Four to mistake them for a cold-blooded, psychopathic Contractor.

 _Unraveling that is going to be very tricky_.

On the one hand he wanted the cops to keep their guard up, because even those Contractors who weren't currently psychopathic likely had only a very, _very_ small cohort of people they considered worth behaving for. On the other hand... whatever their powers and actions, Contractors and Dolls were the bleeding survivors of traumatic soul-injuries. They needed help, not executions.

 _Heavily armed help_ , Ryuuken thought dryly. _Coming up with safe treatment protocols will be tricky_.

But someone had to try. As they were currently, all those affected by the Gates were Hollow-snacks, and it was in no one's best interest for Hollows to grow more powerful. And if his theories were correct, and every Contractor had suffered damage that meant once they died they were Hollows waiting to happen...

Hollows that would have experience with their powers, and their hunger. He wondered how many had already attacked shinigami.

 _Currently, not my problem_ , Ryuuken told himself firmly. _The best I can do at the moment is ensure the police know Li Tian, the part-timer who sees Hollows, first; then carefully introduce the idea that spiritual abilities are far more complex than Section Four knows. Li is just as much a target as any other spirit-sensitive citizen of Karakura. Of course he'd learn to violently defend himself. That, the officers can understand_.

 _Does Isshin?_

He was beginning to doubt the man ever would. From what hints Isshin had dropped of his life before earth, the reports Ichigo and his friends had brought back... life in Seireitei, even Rukongai, was relatively safe from Hollows. Walls of sekki-seki stone and frequent shinigami patrols ensured attacks on normal souls were rare. Strong Hollows could breach Soul Society, as they had with Aizen's help; but normally the Gotei 13 detected such invasions in minutes, and rallied to wipe out every last man-eating spirit.

Life in the living world wasn't safe. Not for anyone with a trace of spiritual power. Hollows could come and go as they pleased, rippling into the living world without a care for any merely physical walls. Most humans didn't have the knowledge or power to ward them out. To see Hollows was to live knowing you were a target; knowing that even if you did your best to hide, all it would take was one night of bad luck.

 _And Isshin apparently thinks Ichigo_ chose _to fight the Hollow after Hideyo_. Ryuuken sighed. _As if Ichigo's soul weren't injured enough_.

"The captains did what they had to, to stop Aizen." Isshin looked him straight in the eye. "You know he was going to murder the whole town. And that would just have been the warm-up."

"I'm well aware of that," Ryuuken bit out. "It doesn't change the fact that once again, Soul Society left a mess those of us in the living world will be working for years to clean up. And much of the damage wouldn't have been nearly as acute if you'd just _warned your son_."

Isshin sighed. "Look. Fighting Hollows, I know. Noble politics and double-triple-crosses are something else. Kisuke thought this was the plan with the best chance against Aizen."

 _Oh he did, did he?_ Ryuuken thought darkly. _I have a mad scientist shopkeeper to visit, then._ "Never mind Urahara's plans. This was a plan involving _your son_. The son of _my friend_ , Isshin; you may be annoying and utterly clueless about the mortal world sometimes, but we _are_ friends. I would have helped you, if you'd only told me what was going on!" He caught his breath; this was no time to make it personal-

 _It's Isshin. Maybe this is exactly the time_.

"I'm your friend, and you didn't ask me for help," Ryuuken said, more quietly. "You didn't even let me know your family was in danger. That hurts, Isshin. I failed with Uryuu; I know that. I wanted to be there for all of you, if you needed me. And now all I can do is try to help Ichigo heal." He took another puff of what should have been calming smoke. It wasn't working. "But at least I can do that. Couldn't you have tried to be there for Ichigo before he was hurt? Teach him kendo, teach him tactics; get him to rein in his spirit pressure so the Hollows might have found him when he was a little older? Something. _Anything_." Fury bubbled, and he couldn't quite bite back the next words. "Or could your pride not bear the thought that the _captain of the Tenth_ wasn't strong enough to bring down Aizen himself?"

"Power had nothing to do with it!" Isshin stalked away a few feet, fists bunching. "Don't you think I would have tackled the guy, if I could? I couldn't fight Aizen! That shikai, once you see it you can't trust _anything_."

 _I'm a doctor. Not a psychiatrist_ , Ryuuken thought crabbily. Which was sarcasm trying to hold back sudden dread, because he truly hoped the conclusion that'd just crashed in on him was wrong. "Are you telling me that anything that happened in the past two decades we've known each other - your medical training, your wife, _your family_ \- might be an illusion created by Aizen? Who is currently locked up and completely powerless, if not dead?"

Isshin wouldn't meet his gaze.

Ryuuken let out a long, smoke-free breath. A cigarette was not going to solve this.

 _I may not have been giving Ichigo enough credit. He's refused to talk to his father, as Uryuu once did to me... but the reasons are very, very different_.

After all, there was no point in trying to use reason on a man who refused to take the world around him seriously.

He couldn't even get angry with Isshin for that, Ryuuken realized. What was it like to live almost two decades convinced that the world around you might not be real; that everything you loved and cared for might vanish like mist, the next time Aizen drew his blade?

 _No wonder Ichigo was mired in despair. This is not healthy. And there's nothing he can do to fix it_.

Another tap of ash, falling away in the wind.

 _I'm not sure I can do anything to fix this. But I can try_. "Isshin. I suggest - I _strongly_ suggest - that you talk to Captain Unohana. I'm told she was able to see through Aizen's illusion with no outside help. And you need to talk to someone."

Hopefully the shinigami would have a better idea how to convince Isshin he was in a tangible reality, given one of their zanpakutou was the reason this mess had ever happened.

 _Are there Contractors who can weave such seamless illusions? I'll have to ask Hei. The last thing we need is another Aizen_.

"In the meantime..." Ryuuken took another drag of smoke. "You avoided getting between Ichigo and danger for years. Now is a very bad time to change that habit. He's finally able to perceive spirits clearly again, he has every intention of avoiding Hollows, and after the training he's had, he's much better at assessing imminent threats to life, limb, and sanity."

* * *

 _Iiiiincoming!_

Ichigo caught the blur of black and white out of the corner of his eye, and ducked like his life depended on it. Given Karin had kicked that whirling ball of death, it probably did.

That friendly hacking sound was way too familiar. Oh right. A cat, laughing. "Weren't you supposed to block that?"

Mini-Grimmjow. Well, if the Arrancar had been tiny, a little less bloodthirsty, and a lot more inclined to sit back and watch people make idiots out of themselves.

So, not much like Grimmjow at all. Which was good. His pride had already taken enough hits for the day. "Like to see you block that," Ichigo huffed, picking himself off the grass.

"Not unless I possess a gorilla." Mao didn't even bother to twitch, as the ball skimmed past the picnic to thunk into a bemused Hei's foot. "I'm eyes in the sky and distraction, Strawberry. You and Hei can do the physical work."

Karin caught up with the rest of them, barely breathing hard. "This would be more fun with more people."

"Yeah, well..." Ichigo scratched at the nape of his neck, trying not to shrug too awkwardly. "I kind of dropped _I can see ghosts again_ on Uryuu and the rest while we were on our way out of school. Going to take them a few days to pick their jaws back up."

Karin snickered at that. Yuzu tried to smile, but it was sad.

Ichigo hunched his shoulders, sheepish. Maybe he was being a little vindictive, after almost seven months of being shut out of the spirit mess. Maybe.

Or maybe not. Given the last thing he'd tossed over his shoulder direct to Uryuu was, _"By the way, that bunch of Hollows that were popping in on the north of town last month? Jibakurei. With an appetite. You're welcome."_

Nope. They probably wouldn't be coming to talk to him for at least a few days, after that. Not during O-Bon.

Hei rocked the ball back and forth under his toes. "I think I know what the rules are now? Well, mostly."

Ichigo had to raise an eyebrow at that. Given the man's first reaction when Karin had plucked black and white out of her carry-bag had been, _"What are we supposed to do with this?"_

It'd stopped Karin in her tracks. "You don't know how to play soccer?"

"...I moved around a lot when I was younger."

Ichigo had really, really tried not to wince. It was one thing to look at the smooth confidence of Hei's moves in the middle of a life-or-death fight; quite another to think about just what Hei had spent his life doing, to react as fast and deadly as Yoruichi with a target in sight.

Playing soccer with someone as fast as humans could get. This could be _fun_. "Three-for-all?" Ichigo suggested.

"...Can I play too?" Yin lifted her head. "I can't run well. But soccer should have goalies."

"But," Yuzu started, "if you can't see the ball... I mean, it's hard to see sometimes even for me, it moves fast-"

Yin lifted her hand. "Partner?"

Hei frowned. Slipped his foot under the ball and tossed it up into his hands in a move he had to have cribbed from Karin, and walked over to crouch by Yin. "Can you tag it? It's not alive."

"...I think so?"

"Tag it?" Yuzu frowned, as Yin touched the ball; brightened, as silver-blue light limned some of the black pentagons. "You can put on a spirit-light!"

"Nifty Doll trick," Huang noted. "Saved our butts a time or two. What Yin can tag, she can track."

"Not just Yin." Hei was staring. "I can see it."

Ichigo gave him a quick look. "Wait, you couldn't before?"

"Most Contractors can't see energy the way a Doll can." Mao sat up, tilting his head one way, then the other, like any cat trying to gauge the best pouncing distance. "Dolls can see another Doll's tag, or the stored power a Contractor's left to fire off later. Of course, most of them can't tell you about it." He squinted at the ball. "It's a little fuzzy for me, but I do see a glow. Odd. Is it that close to ghosts?"

"It's spirit energy," Karin said firmly, reaching out to touch one of the glowing patches. "I guess that'd make sense. You said Dolls and Contractors are kind of the same, only Dolls get hit harder by the Gates. From what Sandal-Hat's said, the worse someone gets burned with spirit energy, the more likely they'll start seeing things."

Ichigo caught Hei's subtle swallow, and waved his hands. "Don't worry. We're not taking you guys anywhere near Urahara. Not unless you ask."

"We're not?" Yuzu frowned. Blinked. "I just want to know why. I go there for candy; I won't say anything."

"The people I used to work for had a lot of scientists," Hei said quietly. "Some of them were vicious. Most of them... just didn't care what they did to you."

"Oh." Yuzu nodded to herself, then reached out in a swift hug.

"Um." Hei's eyes were almost as wide as Li's, as he carefully patted her shoulder. "I... hi?"

Yuzu eyed that tentative touch, then slanted a tender scowl up at him. "Silly. Everybody I know is dangerous. And you already know how to be careful. It's okay."

Hei took a slow breath. "...You're really brave."

Yuzu's cheeks turned pink. "I just know my brother. And his friends. Some of them can be scary, but none of them would _hurt_ us."

And Ichigo had to try not to wince _again_ , because Hei was hiding it but that was an eye-slide Ichigo'd seen from Sandal-Hat when some of _his_ past bad judgment calls came to bite him in the butt.

 _He's hurt someone like my sisters. What the hell_.

Then again... Dr. Ishida hadn't told him anything personal about Hei, but he had been willing to go over exactly what a Quincy meant by _empathic amputation_. The ex-criminal hadn't been hit as hard as a Contractor, but his ability to reach out and connect with other people might as well have gone three rounds with Yoruichi.

"Between that and being possessed by a near-Arrancar..." Organizing his notes, the doctor had sighed. "If he ever does end up in a court of law, I'll be arguing for _was not in his right mind_."

"Don't do that to him," Ichigo'd said quickly. "Possessed or not, crook or not, Hei had choices. He made them. Even if they were bad choices. Don't take that away from him."

That had earned him a cold gleam of glasses. "Ichigo-"

"You're talking to the guy who had his own personal Hollow, remember?" Ichigo had cut him off. "And yeah, I made some really lousy choices because of that." Some of them insanely lousy, like jumping into Hueco Mundo with almost no backup and even less planning. "But they were still mine. It's the only way I can live with myself."

Dr. Ishida had let it drop, with only a quiet grumble about legalities not being the same as psychological realities and neither of them being his field, damn it, Isshin.

Well. Hadn't been like Ichigo could actually argue with that one.

And here and now Hei had turned that eye-slide into a credible look over the proposed field of play for possible goal spots. Ichigo frowned. One side of the riverbank was clear, and with her eyesight they'd have to give Yin that spot; the other had a cracked concrete base a couple yards square that stood a tripping inch above grass-level, where someone had apparently started building a bridge or something before the construction bust-

Hei was eyeing that pillar base. Considering. "Yin? How much water do you need?"

Yin walked over to the concrete, crouching to drift her fingers across gray edges. "A puddle? If I can touch it."

Hei nodded, and glanced at Karin. "A goalie can use her hands, right?"

"Right," Karin said doubtfully, as Hei picked up one of the empty bento boxes and headed for the river. "But you can't dodge around on wet concrete! You'll trip."

"She doesn't have to dodge." Mao's ears were perked, tail twitching as if he spied a particularly tasty bit of unwatched salmon. "Not if her specter does for her."

Huang brushed a stray bit of grass off his beret. "Does kind of make it three on two, though. And I'm not up for running around as goalie." He winked at Yuzu. "How about it, little lady? You interested in evening up the odds?"

Ichigo watched his quieter sister light up, and grinned.

Karin scooted close enough to whisper. "Um. Won't two of us on Li be kind of-?"

"Give him thirty seconds to get a feel for us tag-teaming him, and we'll need every edge we can get," Ichigo muttered back. "Li's fast as an unseated shinigami, _in his body_."

"You mean it's like going after Toushirou in a gigai?" Karin's eyes lit too; only hers had a fierceness Ichigo recognized from his mirror. "Ooo. This could be _awesome_."

* * *

Huang munched on a stray mochi somehow overlooked by the ravening hordes, watching the Kurosakis battle it out against Hei, Yin, and Yin's specter. At least he assumed the specter was in play, from the way the ball seemed to stop once in midair above the water-soaked goal, and hurl back the other way. Kind of annoying, being the only guy here who couldn't see half of what was going on-

Huang eyed that thought, mentally hung it up on a target, and sniped it from a half-mile away. Nope. He was _not_ tempting the universe. Kind of luck Ichigo and Hei both attracted, the Gates would bite _him_ and there would go the team's last link to sanity.

 _Better think about something else_. Huang rested his hands on his knees, casting a sideways glance at the cat curled around a full stomach. "Mao. You as twitchy as I am that we ain't been found yet?"

"Hmm. Probably yes and no." The chipped ear flicked. "From what I can hack, Kirihara seems to have kept her word, which puts us officially off the grid for the first time since our stars appeared. As long as her friends in Astronomics conveniently forget to scan here, she's eliminated the primary way the Syndicate's always kept Contractors on a leash. And if we're very, very lucky, Kirihara arranged it quietly enough that the Syndicate doesn't even know no one's looking for us."

"Huh." Huang scowled. "But they can still read flares."

"And all that will tell them is that we used our Contracts somewhere Astronomics doesn't scan," Mao said happily. "They'll assume it has to be somewhere out in the hinterlands away from Tokyo. Oh, it's not a perfect camouflage; from the star locations they know we're still on Honshu _somewhere_. But there's an awful lot of somewheres for a man with Hei's skills. Not to mention a cat."

"Heh. Point." Huang took a breath, more relieved than he wanted to admit. If Mao thought he had to run like heck, he would. If the cat-Contractor was calm enough to enjoy himself, Mao believed the odds were pretty good in their favor.

"On top of that," Mao's claws kneaded the picnic cloth, "a surprising number of the Japanese branch of the Syndicate seem to be under lock and key. Section Four has been _very efficient_. And Kirihara's recording of how Hourai's scheme could have just as well wiped out all of Japan seems to have kicked various otherwise unhelpful government sorts in the ass. The Japanese government isn't just spring-cleaning, they're strip-searching every last department. From the sudden spike in official suicides, I'd say the Syndicate here is going down in flames." Violet glanced at Huang; a black-furred shrug. "I wish I could search more deeply, but I still have to sneak around the Web. The last thing I need is a DOS attack."

Wasn't that the truth. Huang frowned. He'd never thought he'd like the freaks and monsters, but... Mao wasn't bad, for a slightly sociopathic fuzzball. Sure, the cat might not be best-buddy material, but he was a _team player_. When the chips were down, Mao would always sneak in where they needed him most.

Chips. Huh. "You need a body that don't need a chip to keep your mind going."

Mao snorted. "Hello? Animal possession? I may like fish, but I refuse to take over a dolphin. All that _water_. Ugh."

Furball had a point. "If Ishida's right, though," Huang observed, "you're a living ghost. What if we could get our hands on one of those - what'd Ichigo call 'em, the false bodies that shinigami wear when they're poking around in the real world?"

"Gigai," Mao stated. "And... hmm. That's an intriguing idea, but he said they were made by Soul Society."

"And Urahara," Huang agreed. "Yeah. Problem." He might not be able to feel the bone-deep flinch Hei had when it came to scientists and experiments, but seeing the Black Reaper turn pale at anything was enough to make a sane guy pause and reflect. Scientists made Hei nervous. The thought of a scientist who was specialized in poking around in people's spirits - exactly where Contractors and Dolls had been hit hardest - made their team's heavy hitter want to pull his very best vanishing act.

 _Weren't for us needing help, an' Ichigo, he'd already be gone_.

Huang wasn't sure if he should thank the kid or kick Hei to get going while the going was good. If the Japanese government had mad Doctor Schroeder and his anti-Gate plans, it might not just be the Syndicate who wanted their grubby hands on Hei. Just by existing, Hei was a potential bomb right in the middle of Japan.

Granted, only during an eclipse. The average politician wasn't going to care about the pesky little details. Hei plus Gate equaled potentially _millions_ dead. Wasn't something any sane guy in power could ignore.

The rational thing for Hei to do would be leave Japan. If he wasn't near the Gate, he couldn't set it off, and people wouldn't die.

... _Regular_ people wouldn't die. If someone decided the Syndicate had had a good idea after all, Contractors and Dolls would be toast.

And Hei was not going to let that happen, Huang knew. Mao and Yin were part of his team. Nobody killed them while he still had breath to stop it. Not to mention- Huang stiffened. "Mao. The Gates stabbed people right in the spirit, right?"

A black ear flicked. "So Ryuuken says. So far he seems to be right."

"An' people with ghost-sight - they've all got spirit-burns too. 'Cause exposure to energy's what pries the lid off, lets 'em see things?"

"Yes...?" Mao drew out.

"So." Huang took a breath. "What happens to everybody who sees ghosts, if the mad scientists take out Hell's Gate?"

Mao went very still, only the tip of his tail twitching. "That is an interesting question I'd rather not answer the hard way. It's possible Gate energies are sufficiently different that the Gate-touched would be the only ones affected. It's also possible they're sufficiently _similar_ that we'd all go down together. Including any Hollows or shinigami in the range of effect. Which was supposed to be the whole planet."

Yeah, that's what he'd thought. "We need to tell Ishida."

"And Hei," Mao agreed. "Though you realize, this is only going to make him more attached to the people he's met here."

Huang gave him a look askance. "That a bad thing? Humans need other people to stay alive, cat. And Ishida says he's human. Mostly."

"Hmm, more just an observation," Mao mused. "It's honestly intriguing to see how much of Li _isn't_ an act. If we hadn't covered for him the Syndicate would have realized he was dangerously irrational half a year ago, and then where would we be?" Whiskers flattened. "I'm no shrink, but if he is mostly human, he must have been in some kind of deep shock to pass for a Contractor so long. I wonder what brought him out of it? Time, a relatively long mission in Tokyo where he got to spend more time as his persona than killing people, being close to the Gate?"

"Three years in Heaven's War, kid sister missing, waking up with her powers, still stuck as an assassin?" Huang deadpanned. "Gee. Dunno what coulda shocked the guy."

Watching Karin put a particularly vicious spin on a kick headed Hei's way, Mao chuckled. "You like him."

Huang kept his eyes on Hei's block-and-counter, and off knowing violet. "Get out."

"You're emotionally attached. Admit it." Mao's head rubbed his knee. "It's even rational. You know he'll protect you if we're attacked. Just as he protects all of us. We're his team. We make him feel warm. Safe. Not alone. For a Contractor, that's a precious thing."

Pretty precious for a human, too. "We make you feel warm, fuzzball?"

A long minute passed. "...I think so," Mao said at last. "It doesn't feel like I remember feeling, when I was human. I don't remember _thinking_ about feeling then; I just felt. Now - I can feel, and I can think, but sometimes I have to think about feeling to make it... come across the gap?" A soft hiss. "It's as if - when you become a Contractor, there's an endless chasm between yourself and feeling and people. But when you three were there, and you made sure I ate, and had backup, and... someone grew a vine bridge across the chasm? It's rickety and I wouldn't put too much weight on it, but it's there... it shouldn't be this hard to explain!"

"Easy." Huang stroked down raised hackles. "Feelings confuse anybody. An' it fits what Ishida said. You got missing pieces. Some of it's growing back, kind of. The rest, you need to figure out how to work around 'em." Time to distract an agitated kitty. "Might be easier if you had fingers again. Think we can figure a way to scam a gigai out of Soul Society?"

Mao leaned back, fur still ruffled. "We'd need a lot more information on access points, and what gigai actually are. No point in stealing something if it'd blow up too soon." He winced as Ichigo skidded on the grass; perked up as the teenager turned it into a recovery roll and charged right back into the fray. "Though I admit, I've missed the simple pleasure of flipping through a newspaper."

Huang grinned. "Or playing soccer?"

"Getting in on _that_ would be a good way to get things broken," Mao said ruefully. "Look at them. Tell me that's human."

Huang watched the lightning reflexes battling it out on both sides, the way the Kurosakis just needed a glance to change strategies; how Hei leaned on Yin's specter defense to put everything into _attack_ , keeping the score just about dead even. Yin was almost smiling. "I'm not gonna tell them if you don't."


	2. Chapter 2

"...And time!" Karin called out.

Bruised, winded, and maybe sulking just a little that all three Kurosakis hadn't been able to pull off more than a 2-1 victory, Ichigo flopped onto the grass by the picnic cloth. "Dead. So dead."

Mao snickered, as Hei took Yin's hand to help her off the concrete. "For a dead man, you gripe a lot."

"Hah! You should hear some of the _other_ shinigami. One little sword-wound to the chest and they're moping like girls who broke a nail." Ichigo lifted his head to see his sisters slap hands in a high-five. "Um. Not that you guys ever..."

"We know, Onii-chan." Yuzu's smile was bright, if breathless. "And you two didn't know how to play soccer?"

"I couldn't see. Before." Yin blinked as she sat down, taking a long sip of her drink. "...That was _fun_."

That got Ichigo to sit all the way up. Because the tone of that was so odd, like a question and a revelation all at once-

"Did you like it?" Hei said quietly. "We could try it again another time, if you're not sure."

"I think so?" Yin tilted her head, thinking it over. "That was fun. Fun is... different."

The twins traded a glance. "Different?" Karin ventured.

"A little like happy?" Yin glanced down. "But also... excited? And focused. Like trying to find one subject in Tokyo-" Pale lips clamped together.

"It's okay, kiddo." Huang patted her shoulder, gruffly gentle. "They already know you find things. They're smart kids; they figured it out."

They'd figured out enough, Ichigo knew, as his sisters blanched and gave him a look of, _why are we only meeting your friends now, if things were this bad?_

To which Ichigo could only shrug, sheepish. Because he hadn't known. Sure, he'd seen Yin was shy and quiet, and Ryuuken had said her soul was hurt, bad as a living person could get - but he hadn't realized what that _meant_.

 _She didn't remember what fun was? Ow_.

"What about you two?" Yuzu asked, glancing between Hei and Mao. "I mean, our brother says you were hurt, but - we don't know enough about souls yet. Are you okay with- I mean..."

"Oh, I get my fun snarking at these two," Mao grinned. "It took a while, but I think my sense of humor was the first thing to come back." A liquid black stretch. "It kind of had to. You can't live as a cat in an organization that will kill you if you're not useful if you can't laugh at the whole mess."

"Mao!" Hei hissed.

"Hei." Mao shrugged, unimpressed. "As our resident grouch said, they're smart kids. They need to know that if the Syndicate does find us, the safest thing they can do is _run_." Violet eyed the twins. "Seriously. Run, get help if you can, but get yourselves _out_ of hostage-taking range. None of us are helpless, and Hei fights best if there's no innocents in range to shock."

Yuzu swallowed. Karin frowned, but nodded. "That makes sense," she said grudgingly. "I can fight monsters. I don't know about people. We'll get Ichigo. Or Chad. Or somebody."

Ichigo let out a breath of pure relief. If his sisters said it, they meant it; they'd get help, not try to throw themselves into the middle of a fight they couldn't win. They were smart about stuff like that.

...Probably smarter than he was. Go figure.

"I don't know." Yuzu had a look of sisterly mischief. "Our brother went and got help, and he still jumped into a whole other _dimension_ when Orihime was in trouble..."

Argh. "Promise I'll try not to do that again?" Ichigo said sheepishly. "But Captain-General Yamamoto said Orihime was a traitor. That was crazy."

"Orihime," Karin said flatly.

"Yeah."

"The girl who puts jelly on leeks and thought the Mafia held a boxing championship match in her living room, and that explained all the Hollow damage."

"Yeah," Ichigo sighed.

Very deliberately, Karin clapped a hand to her face. "You know, Toushirou being such a grump makes _so much more sense_."

"Toushirou?" Hei gave her a tentative smile. "Is he a friend?"

"He would be, if he could ever get any time off to relax from the paperwork and the crazies in his division," Karin grumped. "For a hundred-years-old shinigami, he plays pretty good soccer..."

Ichigo sat back and listened to the story of a crazy kid's pickup game, with strait-laced Hitsugaya Toushirou, Captain of the Tenth, succumbing to Karin's prickly charms enough to partner her on the field. And then saving her one-handed from the Hollow who'd landed on the victory celebration.

 _Wonder how much she's cleaning it up for Big Brother Who Worries Too Much_.

Probably not nearly as much as Hei had the story of the Baby Yakuza and Doll calling for help. Ichigo'd seen Hei's knives, and the matter-of-fact way he'd handled the razor-sharp black blades. They were _not_ for show.

But whatever had actually happened, Hei had... well, _tried_ to tone it down to PG. Mostly. Not enough for the usual twelve-year-old, and thank goodness his sisters already knew a few of the nastier facts of life.

 _He tried, anyway. How many kids does an assassin talk to?_

Anyway, the violence hadn't been nearly as interesting to his sisters as how Hei had described using his power in ways that _didn't_ kill. Faking a taser, for instance, to take unwary Yakuza down in a way that didn't mark him out as anything more than a prepared clumsy waiter. Zapping another guy through a car, so it looked like an ungrounded battery. And the whole completely powerless episode of just dodging an angry Yakuza that had started the mess...

That had made Ichigo sit up and pay attention. Because that clueless act was _important_.

 _I know what I can do,_ Hei's actions said. _It doesn't matter what other people think_.

Ichigo wanted to know how to do that. How to be... grounded enough, confident enough, that it didn't _matter_ what his enemies thought. Because he had a temper, he knew it, and it had gotten him in _so much trouble_. If he could just figure out how to make idiots' taunts not matter, if he could get to the point that he could just casually mention, _and then they started shooting at me and Baby Yakuza charged one of them and knocked him out, so I didn't have to do anything drastic_...

If he could get to there, it'd mean a lot. It'd make his sisters, everybody he cared about, safer. So how?

He mulled that while they started cleaning up. Huang and Mao looked after the bento boxes; and if the cat might be snarfing another scrap or two of fish as they went, that was his business. Yin was helping the girls pick up plates and stuff. Ichigo blinked at the little specter in the iced tea pitcher, wondering what it was like to navigate the world seeing through something that wasn't your own eyes.

 _Weirder than stabbing ghosts. I think_.

He and Hei swept around the edges of where their game had been, making sure any stray napkins got snatched and trashed and otherwise patting turf and stuff back into order. Karin played _hard_.

Hei had played just as hard right back at her. He took her seriously. Kid or not. Girl or not.

Which made the looks Hei was sliding the twins' way right now even weirder. They were quick, and Ichigo'd bet Hei was trying to hide them, but - that was beyond worry. That was...

 _Oh. I know that look. From the mirror_.

Heartbreak. Something broken, in a way that'd never really get fixed. Just patched over and lived with.

Ichigo eased over that way as he poked for leftover trash, waiting until Hei really looked at him. "Like somebody said once. I don't know what I can do, but it looks like something hurts. And it's... not my sisters?"

 _Don't shrug. A shrug's wrong here, this is serious. Just wish I knew what was_ right.

"It could have been them." Hei's voice was almost too quiet to hear. "Years ago. What I did in Heaven's War... it was wrong. I was protecting Bai, but - so much of what I did was wrong."

Ichigo told the hairs on the back of his neck to _stand down_ , damn it. Hei had tells; hard to see, but he had them. If the ex-assassin had suddenly decided he wasn't _ex_ anymore, he'd know.

 _I hope_.

"So back then you might have hurt them," Ichigo got out. "But you wouldn't now."

"No!" Blue eyes flashed wide; almost as wide as Li at his most innocent. "Nothing's worth that now. Bai is gone." Hei looked away, pale. "Bai... is gone."

Ichigo tried not to breathe too loud. One wrong move, and Hei would curl into the same spiky ball of grief he had, when it'd finally hit that his mom would never come back. "I'm not going to ask," he said carefully. "I'm no good at this, I know I'm not-"

"...Xing was nine."

Nine. Oh man, Ichigo remembered being nine, with two little sisters clinging to him after their world fell apart. Yuzu had cried, and that had been bad; Karin hadn't, and somehow that had been _worse_.

Hei glanced over his shoulder, checking that none of the girls were likely to wander into casual earshot. "Do you remember when the skies changed?"

"Not much," Ichigo had to admit. "I kind of remember a lot of people being worried? But that's when the twins were born, and I was just getting used to being a big brother, so..."

"Nothing else matters as much," Hei agreed. "In China... I remember everyone was afraid. Almost everyone. The shadows ate the skies, and the old stars weren't there anymore - a lot of people went crazy."

 _Listen_ , Ichigo told himself firmly as he nodded. _Don't ask, just listen_.

"There was a couple," Hei went on. "Older man, younger woman; I think we'd seen them before, walking home from school. They never looked happy. That day we were out a little late, near the top of a hill by town, there was a curfew but Xing wanted to see how the shadows looked at sunset. She was trying to draw it, and that street had the best view. She got so frustrated when the yelling started..." He looked away. "Blood has different colors. The movies don't show you that."

"No," Ichigo agreed, heart a lump in his throat. He remembered blood. At nine. He wished he didn't. "No, they don't."

Hei nodded. "Now I know that was arterial spray, and there wasn't anything I could have done."

Ichigo tried not to gulp too hard at that one. Details like that - the day had to be etched on Hei's memory, like rain and the riverbank were on his.

"Back then I just knew he had a knife." Hei's eyes were distant. Almost dead. "The woman was reeling. Blood all over her neck, her shoulder. Spots on the paper. Xing was screaming. I grabbed her and I made us run."

Caught in the middle of someone's murder and a twelve-year-old kid had still protected his sister. Ichigo hadn't been impressed by much after Soul Society's Flaming Chicken of Death, but that qualified.

Hei's shoulders twitched; the bare minimum of a shrug. "I found a policeman. There were a lot of questions. Our parents took us home. And Xing... stopped talking. Stopped drawing."

Ichigo winced. _Oh, here it comes_.

"Our parents thought it was what she saw," Hei reflected. "And they were... distracted. The power kept flickering. That wasn't new, it was China, but - it started happening a lot."

Ichigo waited. Nodded, just a little; _yeah, I'm still listening_. Because he could feel his own nerves going taut, picturing a little sister turned living Hollow and _no one had a clue_.

 _Worst. Horror movie. Ever_.

"It was - three days later? Maybe four? I wasn't sleeping well; I went to bed early, even before Xing. I woke up to a noise. I'd never heard anything like it before." A slow blink. "These days I know what a body falling sounds like."

Ichigo swallowed. _So do I_.

"The lights were on downstairs, but they were flickering. I started down... and our mother started screaming. She called Xing a monster." Hei hesitated. "I got there just in time to see Xing... blink at her. And then - she just shrugged. And touched her." His voice was almost soundless. "She glowed like a heavenly maiden. And our mother died."

Ichigo tried. He did. But he couldn't help but shiver.

Hei glanced his way, with a soundless sigh. "Xing said Mother didn't want to live knowing her daughter had become a monster. So now she didn't have to. And then - my sister fell asleep."

The shivers didn't want to stop. Because Hei hadn't even mentioned his dad, and if their mom had been screaming about monsters something had to have happened, something Hei was stepping around in his own mind-

 _Like another body on the floor?_

And it scared Ichigo that _he knew what that was like_. In his gut. In his _bones_. Because horrible as dead bodies were, they were just bodies. Living people - surviving souls - had to come first.

But there'd been something in Hei's words. Something important. "That's how you knew how to handle her," Ichigo realized. "If she was taking what people said literally..."

Hei nodded; shoulders tight, eyes bleak. "I didn't think it through right then. My - our parents were dead, something was _wrong_ with Xing, and I knew the cops would never understand. Two children, parents dead like something out of a ghost story; we weren't poor, but we weren't Han, we'd be _lucky_ if we didn't end up in an asylum-"

"Wait, wait." Ichigo shook his head. Because something didn't make sense - and if Hei wound himself up any tighter, there'd be a lightning strike right on the riverbank. "You're not Chinese? I thought you said there were a million Li's in China."

Hei stopped, and mouthed something that did _not_ look like Japanese under his breath. "Han is not all people in China. Just most of them. We were not. Like - being Korean, here."

Oh. _Oh_. Oh hell, no wonder a twelve-year-old kid had panicked and run. Ichigo'd seen Chad have enough trouble, and he was half-Japanese. If Chad had been caught with a pair of dead bodies and a crazy story... yeah, no, he wouldn't have gotten loose from people with white coats and hypodermics, ever.

"So I found what I could that we could use to run, and when Xing woke up I told her I wanted to live," Hei went on. "She said that was good, because using her power made her sleep, and she needed me. And... we left."

Ichigo drew a breath, ready to say how much that must have sucked-

 _Wait. That's not everything, not the way he's fidgeting. Just wait_.

"If you've ever thought about running away from home - it's a bad idea," Hei said, very carefully. "The streets are a hard place to live. They attract desperate people... and people who know you're desperate. A nine-year-old girl, who's _pretty_ \- there are scum who'd do anything to get their hands on her. And what they want-" Fingers clenched on a stray napkin, knuckles white. "At least the Hollows are _hungry_."

Oh hell. Ichigo had to swallow hard. "They tried to touch her - like that. And she killed them."

"Not all of them." Blue eyes were haunted. Cold. "They wanted her so much... they'd forget about me."

 _I want to throw up_. Ichigo gulped it back, because he was sick but he was also _so angry_. That shouldn't have happened. To anybody. And it was no damn wonder Hei had gotten into being an assassin. If someone had laid hands on Karin or Yuzu like that, if they'd ever tried-

 _I'd kill them. And I wouldn't be sorry. Not ever_.

"And then the Syndicate found us, and I was glad," Hei said quietly. "I was _glad_. Because whatever they wanted us to do, whoever they wanted us to kill... no one ever tried to touch Bai like that again. _Ever_."

"You owed them," Ichigo said, just as quiet. Because it wasn't nice, it wasn't right - but if the whole mess with Aizen and the Vizards and everything had taught him anything, it was that the world was not fair. And it wasn't _fair_ that it wasn't fair.

Hei nodded. "If they hadn't tried to kill my team, I might still be there."

Ow. And ah-ha. Ichigo knew this nasty little mind-weasel _so_ well.

 _I did something horrible, I don't deserve nice things - take the warm fluffies away from me before they get hurt, too_.

Granted, the twins were _very_ fluffy. Maybe a bit too much for Hei to take head-on. But Ichigo was going to try.

 _I could tell him about Mom, I know what it's like to hate yourself_ -

No, that wouldn't work. Ryuuken said everybody hit by the Gate had been damaged, right in the middle of where human emotions ought to be. If Yin couldn't even remember what fun was, then Hei... Hei probably hadn't been trying to tell Ichigo what he felt, and why. He'd been saying _what happened_. Because he'd thought he was a Contractor for five years and Contractors were _supposed to be rational_. Meaning he'd had all the feelings a terrified, ticked-off human should and jammed them down so deep he thought he hadn't felt anything. And now everything was bubbling back up and Hei was trying to figure out the whole tangled mess. Ow.

 _Okay. If feelings are all screwed, maybe I can just try facts_. "You owed them then," Ichigo said bluntly. "You don't owe them now."

Hei blinked, blue eyes a little more alive. "No."

"Right now you owe your team, and you owe yourself," Ichigo nodded firmly. "You don't like who you were with the Syndicate. Fine. Change that. Karakura's got plenty of room for weird." He snorted. "Heck, my dad's a doctor and no one even _blinks_."

Ooo, that won him a little twitch of a smile. Progress.

"But if you wanted to try... something..." Ichigo hesitated. Hei was older, sadder, and had seen way more death than Ichigo hoped he'd ever see. Who was he to give an ex-assassin advice?

 _Ah heck. I give it to Sandal-Hat, and Urahara's made nastier mistakes than all of us put together_.

"Was there something you and your sister liked to do together? And I don't mean you and Xing," Ichigo stated. "You said Contractors were getting feelings back. Was there anything you and Bai did together? Something good. Something you can hang onto."

 _Because if Sora was Orihime's brother even after he Hollowed - then Bai was still your sister. There had to be something. I hope._

"...Oh." Hei looked aside, thoughtful. "That's right. We're not being tracked here."

"Um?" Ichigo managed, as Hei snagged a last stray wrapper and headed back to the girls. "Wait. You mean, Bai used her power for something besides zap?"

"She didn't call it fun." Hei stuffed the trash in its appropriate bag. "It was field-appropriate research. We both did it. Trying to find out what a Contract was, what she could do. Sometimes missions called for killing, but a lot of the time we were more effective if we _only_ hit one target. That's how I know how to knock people out. Scramble memories so no one remembers seeing me. We looked up everything on electricity. Some of the stuff was pretty weird." He snagged a water bottle, pouring a spoonful into a cupped palm. "Sometimes we'd run short of water purifiers. Bai learned how to yank anything _but_ water out, so we had something safe to drink. And while we were figuring that out, she came up with something else. It's not really useful, but... in the middle of a jungle, it was kind of fun."

Holding his left hand cupped, Hei held his right over it, spreading his fingers with a look of intense concentration.

Ichigo glanced at the girls, Huang, and cat. Mao was the only one who shrugged; evidently he'd never seen whatever this trick was-

In the space between Hei's hands, little blobs of water were floating.

* * *

Yuzu pressed up against Kirsi to get a closer look, delighted. So much of what her brother and his friends could do was just a blur, if she could see it at all. This? Water shifted and shimmered and glorped together into larger wobbly spheres, and it was _magic_.

"The hell?" Uncle Kuno muttered.

"Electromagnetic levitation." Mao's eyes were wide, ears pricked and curious. "I read some bits in your file that Syndicate researchers thought it might be possible, but there were no results." One ear flicked. "Then again, there wasn't anything about purifying water, either... oh. Oh, _interesting_. That was a very good hole card to keep, if you thought you were going to end up back in the labs. They always would drug the drinks."

Yuzu felt Kirsi shiver, and hugged her. "It must have been a really bad place. But you're not there, and you're _not_ going back."

"No," Kirsi agreed; faint, but determined. Blinked, and focused on the water. "Pretty."

"It's tricky to pull off," Hei muttered-

-No, Li, they'd better call him Li in public, Ichigo _said_ they were in trouble and Yuzu just knew from the tone Mao had said his _real name_ to jab at Li. Because cats.

"I have to keep the charges balanced," Li went on, "fingers aren't perfect angles, and if there's any wind-"

A breeze curled past. Water splashed against his fingers, globes collapsing in a shimmer of static.

"That happens," Li finished. "But... it is kind of fun."

 _I wish I could do something like that_ , Yuzu thought wistfully.

But she wasn't going to say it. Supernatural powers could be neat, but they'd gotten her family in all kinds of trouble. _Someone_ had to focus on making sure everybody got fed and slept. Especially her noble idiot big brother.

Kirsi tilted her head, as if listening to water drip from Li's hands. "If you can do that, I can look through it."

"Huh." Uncle Kuno's gray brows lifted. "Even for a minute, that could come in handy."

"So this Bai taught you how to do that?" Karin was studying the water, and Li. "Who was-" She saw Li's stricken look, and swallowed her words. "Never mind, forget I asked..."

"Bai was my sister." Li glanced away. "She was a Contractor."

 _Was_. And that grim, sad look on Ichigo's face... "I'm sorry," Yuzu said softly. "You loved her a lot." Because that wasn't even a _question_. The way her big brother trusted Li, everything he'd said to make sure girls he barely knew would stay safe, the _careful_ way he used his powers - he was so much like some of the best people she knew.

 _Scary. But safe_.

Karin was frowning. Mao gave her a sidelong glance. "Something bothering you?"

"...You said Contractor powers were like Hollow powers." She looked up at Ichigo. "Urahara says Hollow abilities are unique. Like shinigami shikai. They come out of the soul the Hollow was." She looked Li dead in the eye. "So how did you and your sister have the _same_ powers?"

Yuzu almost froze. Because Karin was probably right, she paid attention to things people taught her about ghosts, but if Li's sister was gone that had to _hurt_.

Yet Li just... nodded. Eyes sad, but respectful.

 _He's - glad she figured it out?_

"We didn't have the same powers," Li said quietly. "While my sister was a Contractor, I was human. And then..." His gaze flicked to Ichigo. "Rukia asked. My sister - didn't."

In the corner of Yuzu's vision, a black tail lashed. "She may not have had time."

Everyone's eyes fixed on Mao. The cat glanced over them all, then gazed straight at Li. "You found a third option in Tokyo. At Heaven's Gate, Bai _didn't_."

Color drained from Li's face like water.

"What." Karin cast a fierce look at the cat, at Uncle Kuno; even at Ichigo, who was just as pale and trying not to look their way. _"What option."_

Uncle Kuno grimaced. "Five years back? Kill every Contractor an' Doll on the planet... or kill every human inside half of Brazil." He didn't soften his look at Karin, girl or not. "Bai took door number two."

"And at the time," Mao said, very carefully, "Li was Bai's bodyguard. And _not a Contractor_." Another lash of black. "We know she cared about you. We know she depended on you to protect her. We may never know for certain because all the other parties involved are dead, but if you want my _guess_... Li. I'd say Amber lied to Bai the same way she lied to _you_. Either Amber played down the consequences or - I don't know. But everything I do know about Bai says she was smart, tactically skilled, and creative. If she'd been told there were only two options she would have looked for a third. Just as you did."

"Everyone trusted Amber," Kirsi said quietly. "But she killed so many of us. All the Dolls she used to get into Hell's Gate, they _died_." Her head straightened. "But I went in with Li, and I didn't die. Why didn't she ask?"

"Amber didn't let people say no." Li's voice was almost too quiet to hear. "She'd ask, and lean in, and... and everyone wonders where I learned to manipulate people." He looked down, away from anyone's eyes. "You... really think Bai...?"

"You said there was a lot of light and pain." Mao's voice was blunt, even as violet eyes narrowed. "I think Bai killed you. _By accident_." A furred shrug. "And then she had to work fast, whatever she tried, because human bodies don't stay viable long and for damn sure not in that heat."

"She must have jammed you back into your body somehow." Ichigo looked up. "Rukia said she could do that, as long as there was some soul chain left. And I know you can transfer power between souls. Bai must have used hers to grab onto you and drag you back to life." He hesitated, and Yuzu didn't like the way he blinked at all. "But... it's really hard for a living human to get hold of enough spirit power to touch a soul..."

Yuzu clung closer to Kirsi, feeling her twitch. Because everyone here knew enough about spirits to do the math.

 _If Bai couldn't grab a chain as a live person... she had to do it as a ghost._

"We don't have enough information." Mao deliberately licked down some puffed fur. "So stop worrying. Whatever she did, it worked. You're alive. Focus on that."

"Hate to say it, but we do have to worry about it," Ichigo said reluctantly. "If your chain is broken and you're not a shinigami... I _think_ you can't Hollow as long as you're inside a live body. But we'd better find out. Before we hit a Hollow that knocks your spirit out to munch on."

Yuzu gulped. Because that had been awful, hearing about Orihime's brother, and how close she and Tatsuki had come to dying. And if knocking spirits out of bodies was something Hollows could do-

 _Wait a minute_. "If Hollows can knock spirits out, wouldn't they be able to put them back in?" Yuzu said hesitantly. "And if Contractors are like Arrancar, and Arrancar are really strong Hollows - maybe that's how Bai did it. Maybe you're just fine."

"Maybe." Ichigo ruffled her hair. Glanced at Li again. "But we'd better find out. I've got an idea, but I think we ought to ask Dr. Ishida first. He knows more about human souls; he could tell us if it's a good idea to poke your spirit enough to find out."

Li nodded, shoulders stiff; braced for all the bad stuff in the world.

"But not today," Ichigo went on; like he hadn't noticed, when Yuzu was sure _everybody_ had seen it. "He's probably busy, what with O-Bon and the cops trying to handle people freaking out because dead relatives are still hanging around. Or aren't." He shrugged, with a wry grin that just warmed Yuzu to her toes. "Besides, it's not every day we can just flake out and not have some kind of ghost emergency blow up in our faces-"

Mao's ears pricked up, and the cat sighed. "Heads up. _Don't twitch_."

" _Waaaaauuuuugh I don't wanna die!"_

Faint. Almost more wind than words. But Yuzu heard it. Everyone heard it.

 _No. Not everyone_ , Yuzu realized, watching Huang watch everyone else deliberately not flinch. _He can't hear anything_.

Now she wanted to hug him. But the way he was watching people, set and ready to move - it was like Ichigo just waiting for a thug to make a bad decision. She wasn't going to get in his way.

"You just had to say it, Ichi-nii," Karin muttered through her fingers. "Oh, what did we ever do to deserve... Afro-san, _why?_ "

* * *

 _Don't laugh_ , Hei told himself, keeping his face straight with the same act of will that had kept him walking on a bullet wound. _Don't laugh, if he knows you see him there'll be all kinds of trouble... that hair is even more ridiculous than it felt like. I didn't think that was possible_.

"Quit running!" The poof-haired shinigami grumbled, shaking his katana in his fist as he pelted their way after a panicked salaryman with a yard of broken chain clanking from his chest. "You want some monster to eat you? Suck it up and go on to Soul Society-"

In one smooth motion Hei bent, snagged the iced tea pitcher, and hoisted it up as if about to offer Yin another drink.

The wind as the spirits passed blew bento boxes over, and one sandaled foot planted a print right in the middle of the picnic cloth.

Yuzu started turning pink, but kept it all behind her teeth until the spirit pair had sprinted down the riverbank. "Ooo, that was so _rude_ , if I could get Jinta to take a broom to him-!"

Huang snatched up the cloth, snapping out the dust while he watched everyone else for any more signs of danger. "Jinta?"

Hei blinked. Because that was an odd feeling of relief. Huang trusted them to handle what he couldn't see.

"He works at Urahara Shoten." Yuzu straightened up the boxes, sighing with dismay at the little bits of rice stuck in odd corners. "He always finds the candy I want at a discount. He's really red a lot, though. Maybe Mr. Urahara ought to put someone else on the register, if Jinta has trouble talking to people?"

Hei traded a look with Ichigo. Blushing at and bribing little sisters, was he?

Ichigo scowled back, nodding. _Of course you know, this means war_.

"Before the two of you get sidetracked plotting imminent social death by way of _completely coincidental_ circumstances..." Mao stared after the poof-haired shinigami. "That's the second time we've encountered that idiot. Who is he, anyway?"

"The second-" Ichigo blinked, and choked, what face was visible behind his frustrated hand turning red with what Hei suspected was stifled laughter.

The twins had facepalmed as well. They weren't laughing. "That," Karin bit out, "is the absolute _moron_ who got assigned here as Rukia's replacement."

Yuzu rubbed her fingers across her nose. "I'm sure he just needs more experience..." Her dubious look turned to wary curiosity. "Wait. You met him before? But how did-?"

"Oh _man_." Ichigo couldn't hold back the snickers anymore, arms curled around his gut to keep it from busting open laughing. "And back then you couldn't even _see_ him, and you still-! Thought he'd slammed headfirst into the _power lines_ , Kurumadani's got the situational awareness of a drunk pigeon...!"

Karin's jaw dropped. She traded a glance of slowly dawning glee with her sister, before turning fierce black eyes on Hei. "You?"

"Um." Hei shrugged sheepishly.

It wasn't a girlish giggle. Not quite. But Karin's bright eyes were a hug of sunlight.

Folding the picnic cloth, Huang eyed torn-up turf, face wrinkled in definite thought. "You saying these guys who're supposed to be protecting ghosts from Hollows. Who know this town is _jammed to the gills_ with people with ghost-sight. Assigned a guy here whose MO makes a bull in a china shop look delicate an' demure?"

"Ran into him the night I got back from Soul Society the first time," Ichigo sighed. "Idiot didn't even know I'd be patrolling the town. Darn near knocked him off a roof the first time I had to raise my spirit pressure a little - gah. I don't know what his division was thinking, putting him on this patrol. Not that most shinigami think about mortals, besides people who aren't ghosts yet..."

Hei traded a glance with Huang, and then Mao. Silence was fine. _Thoughtful_ silence meant plotting in progress.

Karin was smacking a fist into her palm, eyes narrowed as she muttered half-formed thoughts on how to get an idiot shinigami to _pay attention_. Hei had to admit, the one with the ghost talismans and monofilament wire sounded appropriately vicious.

Ichigo's grin was slow, evil, and possibly had more teeth than a human should. "You know... you can make water float."

"Yes," Hei said warily.

The teen spread his hands, as if presenting Kurumadani's head on a silver platter. " _Ultimate_ bucket trap."

Hei gave him a look far too suspicious to be one of Li's. Because deliberately setting up a barracks-room prank on a Hollow-fighting spirit seemed like too much risk for too little gain. Even if they could get away with it.

"That'd teach him about running through the walls of a girl's bedroom," Karin grumbled. Blinked at them both, as if she'd just realized how closely they were listening. "Ah, not that that's happened, but the way he ignores everything when he's chasing another ghost - well."

Hei's eyes narrowed. _Then again_...

* * *

Somewhere in Tokyo, chasing down yet another unwary Syndicate lowlife, Kirihara Misaki had an awful feeling.

* * *

 _Girls love ice cream_ , Ichigo nodded to himself, as Karin and Yuzu debated the merits of green tea versus chocolate versus melon, and Huang negotiated with the bemused stand-owner to buy Yin a bowl with five different tiny sample scoops... and one little cup of part-melted vanilla for a certain snarky cat. _Law of nature_.

"I'm still not sure this is a good idea." Hei was using Li's casual slump, but Ichigo could read the terrain well enough to see how Hei could keep an eye on the most obvious approaches for someone bent on mayhem. And more than a few not-obvious, like rooftops reflected in the glass of a storefront.

 _Thank you, Sandal-Hat_.

"For Yin, this is good," Hei went on. "She and the twins... if Yin can learn how to take care of herself as a person, she'd be able to walk away from the Syndicate and just vanish-"

Ichigo folded his arms, and leveled a scowl just a little short of _swords come out next_. "You mean _you'd_ vanish. Don't do that. She'd never forgive you." _Argh, no, that's the self-sacrificing look, I know that one from the damn shrimp shinigami_ and _her brother_. "And it _wouldn't help_. She's got a hole in her soul, remember? She needs people who care about her, so she's got something to lean on when the whole world goes crazy. She needs you. Like my sisters need me. Maybe one of these days I'll run out of luck. Maybe one day a Hollow or a crazy idiot will kill me off for real. That'd hurt them, but they know it can happen. If you just vanish on Yin... it'll tear her up inside."

Hei's gaze slid away from his. "I'm not the kind of big brother she needs."

"What, because you made mistakes?" Ichigo scowled harder. "You think I wouldn't have made the same ones?"

That earned him a startled look. Good.

"Because I would have," Ichigo forged on. "Most of 'em. Maybe all of them. Keeping your little sister safe isn't supposed to be like that." He huffed. "You do crazy things for the people you love, yeah. But I've been turning it over in my head and I _can't think_ of anything you could have done different. She was your sister. Anything else you did would have left her with people who would have killed her. Or worse. And trust me, I'm a shinigami. There are lots of things worse than death."

Hei took a deep breath. "You don't know everything I've done."

"Don't know half the stuff Sandal-Hat did, either. Or Dr. Ishida. Or my own dad. Don't care," Ichigo said shortly. "You did horrible things. I got that. Important thing is, right now, you've stopped doing them."

Blue eyes gave him a sidelong glance. "Right now?"

 _Ahah, you have fallen into my trap. Heh_. "Hey, who knows about tomorrow. Could be a zombie apocalypse." Ichigo hooked his thumbs in his jean pockets, and gave one ex-assassin a fighting grin. "Your power would kind of suck for that."

Give the guy credit for adapting to Karakura insanity; Hei looked like he was taking that seriously. "I could run the generators."

Huh. Not a bad comeback. "Yeah, but you don't want to touch zombies..."

Oh. Oh, Ichigo had an idea, and it was _glorious_.

Also explosive. But hey, if they were talking _zombie apocalypse_ , big booms were a plus.

Not to mention, if it _could_ work - hitting Hollows from a distance was definitely better.

"That water-drop trick," Ichigo said thoughtfully, hands sketching holding, aiming, _target_. "Think you could make like a railgun?"

Hei's eyes were very wide, as the girls caught up to them.

Ichigo mentally buffed his nails as they parted; the girls with him, Hei's team heading off to skulk their way through a few back alleys before they got to their own front door. _Good deed for the day, check_.

Because seriously. What sane guy who'd ever gotten beaten down by a Hollow _didn't_ dream of More Dakka?

 _Eleventh Division_ , part of his brain pointed out.

 _I said_ sane _guy_.

The trip home was thankfully spirit-free, even if he did catch glimpses of a few canoodling ghostly couples as they walked. Ichigo made sure he caught the eyes of one of the idiot ghost guys, scowled, and pointed to his two sisters.

Evidently not a _total_ idiot, that ghost stopped with the fondling and dragged his afterlife date somewhere else.

"Either they don't think people can see them and they do crazy stuff, or they figure out someone _can_ and they won't stop bugging you," Karin grumped. "I don't know why people say _don't speak ill of the dead_. If they were jerks before, dying doesn't make them better."

"Eh, he's gone, relax," Ichigo said firmly. "So... want to tell me what you two were plotting with Kirsi, or are there things teenage brothers were not meant to know?"

"We traded numbers," Yuzu smiled at him. "She said she'd call after she had a few days to think about it."

"They're _really_ skittish," Karin nodded. "We can wait, until they're sure they won't hurt us."

Damn, his sisters were good. "They've got reasons," Ichigo said soberly. "There are really bad people after them."

Which earned him twin looks of _duh_. "Someone tried to make Li choose between his family and blowing up Tokyo." Yuzu's eyes had a fierceness most people only saw _once_. Before their dad booted whoever the jerk was out, never to darken the clinic door again. "People who - who _use_ people that way, like Aizen used Rukia and Soul Society and even those Arrancars... of _course_ they're scared."

"And of course there's more idiots after them," Karin grumped. "Because nobody's sane enough to just leave some hair-trigger jumpy guys _alone_. I wonder if the Vizards even wanted to go back to Soul Society."

That stopped Ichigo cold on the sidewalk. "What?"

Karin started to speak, grimaced, and shrugged. "You know Sandal-Hat. I'm not sure if I overheard it, or if he _wanted_ me to overhear it. But the last time he came back to the Shoten for supplies, he said something to Tessai about really wishing the Captain-General would let Hachigen out of the Divisions so he could have some help warding all that Szayel creep's experiments."

The Vizards' best kido expert and guy with wards and shields... wasn't being let out of Soul Society to clean up Aizen's mess. That sent a definite chill down Ichigo's spine. Because he might not know all the ins and outs of Soul Society but he knew enough to guess Aizen had left the place a _mess_. And given the short time he'd been in Rukongai showed the nobles and shinigami took care of themselves first, and everybody else after... and how Old Man Yama had written Orihime off as a traitor, or at least an _acceptable loss_ , rather than risk more people to rescue her...

 _Kurumadani's not powerful enough to take care of all the Hollows that try to snack on Karakura. Not long-term. He's just been lucky. One of these days he won't be._

 _...And when he's not lucky..._

 _Kurumadani's not powerful. He's an acceptable loss_.

Oh hell. Ichigo still wanted to dump cold water on the guy when the Afro-topped idiot least expected it. But one way or another they _had_ to get the guy some organized help.

 _I need to talk to the gang_ , Ichigo realized, matching his sisters' pace again. The clinic was only a block away, and he needed to _think_ , before he met another flying Isshin attack. _We need to_ really _talk. Figure out what we can do, and how we can do it; not just have whoever's closest run off and smack down Hollows. There's got to be a better way than just throwing everybody at the monsters, because you never know how strong they are and there's no way to call in more help_ -

Ichigo stopped dead, and smacked himself in the forehead.

 _Comms. We need comms_.

Comms, and plans, and a way to scout the damn Hollows before they committed to an attack.

 _We're friends who fight together. But if we're going to pick up Kurumadani's slack - if we're going to help him stay alive - we need to be a team_.

...Oh, that was going to be _so much fun_ , after the past few months.

 _Eh. Jumping ahead of myself anyway_ , Ichigo shrugged, approaching the gate. _I can see Hollows, doesn't mean I can fight 'em yet. Not unless I_ have _to. So... let's do what Rukia would have done, if she hadn't been stuck powerless and still in Karakura. Take it from the basics, and figure out how to always hit the Hollows from behind_.

He stopped at the gate, Karin and Yuzu halting behind him. "Trouble?" Karin asked quietly.

"...No?" But he wasn't sure why. He didn't see anything. It was more like a breath of summer wind across his shoulders, fierce and protective as a dragon-

Tatsuki stepped out of the shadows behind the gate, looking hopeful. "Hey."

Ichigo gave her a nod, still a little breathless. Tatsuki. That was Tatsuki's spirit pressure. He'd _missed_ that. She hadn't been there when he'd dropped the jibakurei bombshell on the others, busy with some martial arts stuff after school, and... he'd missed her then, and hadn't realized what he was missing until now. He'd seen and felt spirits as long as he could remember, having his powers burned out had been like walking around with cardboard cutouts instead of people-

 _Oh. Oh, man, no wonder I was such an idiot_. "I'm sorry," Ichigo blurted out, before he could think twice.

"What for?" Tatsuki gave him a sharp look, fists on her hips. "Is it true? You can see ghosts again?"

What, nobody was going to believe that just _maybe_ Urahara and his dad had been wrong? "Yeah, and-"

His oldest friend pounced, hugging hard and desperate. "Damn it, you idiot, we've been worried about you!"

The twins traded a look, then Karin grinned, Yuzu dropped him a wink...

And they headed inside, leaving him to the grappling arms of near-death. Ack.

"Your dad said not to talk about spirits, and whenever we did, you'd make it about something else, and you looked _horrible_ but there've just been so many Hollows, and..." Tatsuki let go; and if one of her fists came up to scrub near her eyes, it was probably dust.

"Um. Yeah, well... Dr. Ishida came up with something. Going to take a while, but - it's working." Ichigo looked aside, shutting the gate behind them as he felt his ears turn red. "I... kind of didn't want to say anything until we were sure it worked? And then I was in the wrong place at the right time with a kid and a Hollow and - it came out okay. But I had a fight with my dad. And it took a while to cool down." Ichigo thought about how he felt, and winced. "...Cool down a little. I'm still mad at him. It... kind of bled over. Sorry."

"No wonder Orihime thought you were mad at her." Tatsuki tilted her head, squinting at him like an opponent on the training mats. "But you look better. And you sound a lot more like you." She breathed a sigh of relief. "It's okay. We know you; you always get grumpy when you can't do anything and..." She winced. "Damn it, we didn't know what to do. So we tried to follow your lead. You know, not talk about spirit stuff. Which kind of ended up not talking about anything..."

 _They were trying to-?_ Ichigo winced himself, the whole awkward mess of the past few months showing up in a different light. "I'm an idiot."

"Wow. News flash," Tatsuki deadpanned. Reached up with a closed fist, and bapped her knuckles against his forehead. "We know that. But you're _our_ idiot. You need to talk to us when things get all screwy!"

And talk. And apologize. And maybe grovel a little. "Everything just hurt," Ichigo admitted. "I thought you guys didn't care. Because... I couldn't feel it."

"Couldn't feel it?" Tatsuki gave him a look that usually was the prelude to a justified beat-down. "We were there, we were trying. Maybe not the way you wanted, but we can't read your _mind_ -"

"But I could read yours," Ichigo got out. "I grew up feeling spirits, Tatsuki. All the time. Live and dead. I grew up _sure_ when people cared about me. And when they didn't. I could feel it." He swallowed hard. "And then I couldn't."

Tatsuki stared up at him, eyes slowly widening. Squared her shoulders, and let out a long low whistle.

Reached up, and hugged him again. "You _goof_."

"Missed you too," Ichigo muttered into her shoulder. Her spirit pressure was warm, and maybe a little raspy; like smooth scales. It felt awesome. "Thanks. For not giving up on me."

"Like I ever could." Tatsuki let go, looking him over again. "So what'd Uryuu's dad figure out, and how can we help?" She poked him with a finger. "Because I have to tell you, you're my friend and I'd walk through fire for you even if you never saw ghosts again, but I had _no idea_ how messy hunting Hollows was going to get without you."

"It's kind of counterintuitive?" Ichigo scratched the nape of his neck, sheepish. "Turns out healing up a Vizard is different from healing a shinigami. A shinigami can get his zanpakutou put back together with just enough regular spirit energy. Like I did for my dad. But a Vizard's got a Hollow, too."

Tatsuki took a step back, obviously doing the math. "You need Hollow energy."

"Small doses," Ichigo agreed. "We're doing it carefully, but... Dad's really not thrilled about it."

"Yeaaaaah, I bet he's not." Tatsuki thought that over a moment, and nodded. "Okay. You are definitely not doing this alone anymore. How can I help?"

Ichigo hesitated. Because Hei's team and Ryuuken had managed not to kill each other, by dint of meeting in a hospital, but he could just picture Uryuu and Chad and Keigo, oh _gods_ Keigo, poking and prying with words and spirit pressure at people who were still all skittish as Mao in a room full of rocking-chairs-

 _Wait. She didn't say "we". She said "I". And this is Tatsuki. Martial artist first, spirit-fighting just because she has to. And because we're her friends._

 _Tatsuki's careful. She knows when something's too big for her. And she knows you don't take martial arts against guns unless you've got no choice_.

 _This could work_.

"Let me make a phone call," Ichigo stated. "There's other people involved. I want them to meet you, but they're _jumpy_. Worse than the Vizards."

Tatsuki's eyebrows bounced up at that. "Yeah? Soul Society after them, too?"

"They're not that lucky," Ichigo deadpanned. "But if this works out - you might get a new sparring partner."

* * *

A/N: Something I'm not sure some fans have considered when it comes to figuring out Hei's family background: The odds are extremely high the Li family is not Han Chinese. 1) Blue eyes. 2) _Two children_.


End file.
